The Dungeon, while not as elegant as its sibling The City, manages to retain many of the addictive qualities.
The only problem with this is that this title isn't by Philip Price. When his development machine succumbed to a hard drive crash, resulting in all loss of his development on The Dungeon (or so the rumor goes), Ken Jordan and Dan Pinal of Datasoft championed the task of completing it. The end result is a game that, while holding true to The City, loses much in the implementation.
Originally, Alternate Reality was to be a series of RPG's, or "Sections of worlds" that a player could freely pass back forth between, harboring riches from one realm to a previous and beyond. However, Price's programming techniques of The City differed greatly from the end results seen in The Dungeon. The result is a large scale "incompatibility" whereby character honed in The City who enter The Dungeon (once they take some stat hits and lose most of their items) can never return. By this account, it seems wiser to start afresh in The Dungeon and play it as a separate game.
While these shortcomings are disappointing, one shouldn't let them detract too much from The Dungeon's ability to stand on its own. While much easier to survive and thrive in than The City, the difficulty levels off at more of a "just right" feeling throughout most of the game. The same non linear gameplay exists, although some measure of direction is required to complete tasks, the method is left mostly to the player. Likewise, The Dungeon offers up more legend and myth (Chapel Garden, anyone? Dare I mention Shingore?) than The City but leverages complement to its predecessor very well(Acrinimeral's Tomb, you were feared indeed).
The Dungeon is a worthy counterpoint to The City, and while dreams and wishes would deem the two played nicer together, we have two great games instead of one.
For more info, check out Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_Reality_(video_game_series)#The_Dungeon